Clevon Raphael

Dear Ver­na St Rose, I had the plea­sure of meet­ing you in the flesh for the first time about one month ago when I in­ter­viewed you for my Sun­day Guardian col­umn and I must con­fess that when it end­ed I went my way con­vinced that here was a per­son gen­uine­ly con­cerned about the plight of the down­trod­den, es­pe­cial­ly dis­ad­van­taged chil­dren, in our so­ci­ety.

Those young peo­ple who are dai­ly be­ing phys­i­cal­ly, sex­u­al­ly and oth­er­wise abused at the fiendish hands of adults, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who they look to for safe­ty and com­fort. I felt and still feel that Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's choice as her point per­son on chil­dren's af­fairs (the Prime Min­is­ter's Spe­cial Ad­vis­er on Chil­dren's Af­fairs, your of­fi­cial nomen­cla­ture) was well thought out and that at last we would see some mean­ing­ful ac­tion tak­en to deal de­ci­sive­ly with the hor­ri­ble plight of these un­for­tu­nate cit­i­zens of the fu­ture. Ver­na (no dis­re­spect meant and I do hope you don't mind the fa­mil­iar­i­ty), like you I am very par­tial to chil­dren and it griev­ed me over the years to see chil­dren aban­doned on the streets by some rel­a­tive or the oth­er, since they did not just drop from the sky.

So con­cerned I am about their rot­ten lot at this vul­ner­a­ble stage in their lives, I was in­stru­men­tal in launch­ing a chil­dren's fund at a Sun­day news­pa­per when I was the ed­i­tor of that pub­li­ca­tion. Like you and so many oth­ers of that ilk, I too have a pas­sion for jus­tice, fair play and eq­ui­ty for all our cit­i­zens and it re­al­ly up­sets me to see peo­ple tak­en ad­van­tage of, no mat­ter who they may be. And, dear Ver­na, right now the en­tire coun­try is be­ing tak­en ad­van­tage of by a bunch of heart­less zom­bies whose sole pur­pose on plan­et Earth is to ter­rorise de­cent law-abid­ing cit­i­zens. One of the main rea­sons why the last PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion was kicked out was its in­abil­i­ty to curb the spi­ralling homi­cides be­ing com­mit­ted by a bunch of crim­i­nals who re­spect no man, woman or child.

These hired as­sas­sins and, dear Ver­na, those who choose to set­tle dis­putes by tak­ing out their ad­ver­saries via the mur­der route, have vir­tu­al­ly locked down an en­tire so­ci­ety: we can­not go about our le­git­i­mate busi­ness in com­plete peace of mind; we do not know who the next vic­tim would be–to­day it could be me, to­mor­row it could be you. Un­less I am proven wrong, no one on death row had their mis­er­able lives put to an end by the State in the last two PNM regimes and in an ef­fort to put an end to this mind­less mur­der­ous ram­page, the new ad­min­is­tra­tion has sig­nalled its in­ten­tion to car­ry out the law of the land where it re­lates to the death penal­ty.

And that law quite right­ly speaks of any­one be­ing found guilty of mur­der be­ing hanged un­til they are dead. That is the law... no two ways about it. No soon­er had this been an­nounced, you, dear Ver­na, pub­licly stat­ed your ob­jec­tion to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. You ad­vanced all the fan­cy rea­sons for your po­si­tion on a mat­ter that is very dear to Trinida­di­ans/ To­bag­o­ni­ans be­cause the vast ma­jor­i­ty of us are in favour of see­ing these mis­cre­ants swing for the pre­med­i­tat­ed tak­ing of an­oth­er hu­man's life. Now there is ab­solute­ly noth­ing wrong, Ver­na, with a di­ver­gence of views in any po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion, it is healthy for democ­ra­cy. Even though peo­ple may be­long to the same group­ing, shar­ing dif­fer­ing views on the same is­sue could on­ly re­sult in the peo­ple get­ting the best out of those opin­ions.

But where I think you went too far, my dear, is when you threat­ened to chuck in your new­ly-giv­en job if the Gov­ern­ment goes ahead with the re­sump­tion of state ex­e­cu­tions. Please don't find me rude when I say you were out of place to at­tempt po­lit­i­cal black­mail on such an emo­tive top­ic. You may not agree with this con­clu­sion but that is how I see it, and please re­mem­ber no man or woman is in­dis­pens­able. Do you re­al­ly think that sav­ing the life of wan­ton killers who went through the jus­tice sys­tem is more im­por­tant than your charge of com­ing up with so­lu­tions on how to deal with the abuse of our hap­less young boys and girls?

Ver­na, does it mat­ter to you that some of those con­demned men could have very well tak­en the lives of in­no­cent young chil­dren? Dear Ver­na, I don't want to ac­cuse you of hav­ing your pri­or­i­ties wrong but in this in­stance they do seem to be a bit off. How come your stand against state ex­e­cu­tions must take prece­dence over that of the Cab­i­net and the vast ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens who strong­ly be­lieve that a dent could be made in the homi­cide mad­ness by pop­ping a few necks at up­per Fred­er­ick Street? The hang­man must re­turn to du­ty at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty and I am sure that the Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led Cab­i­net would not cave-in in its re­solve to get a grip on the crime sit­u­a­tion by threats such as yours, dear Ver­na. It is not too late, my dear, to re­verse your choice–con­vict­ed mur­ders or the lives of our young peo­ple.

NEXT WEEK: The il­log­i­cal an­ti-com­put­er-in-schools stance of Dr Mor­gan Job and his ilk